On Life and Death

Some people think there’s a plot to infect them. That’s mistaken, but even worse, they’ve been infected with a paranoia that makes them think there’s a plot against them. The lies they tell themselves are killing them.

William Stafford
in On Peace and War, 2003

Old men do not grow wise, they grow more careful.

Count Geffi,
in A Farewell to Arms,
Ernest Hemingway, 1929

A murder by a court of law is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal.